Tuesday, September 01, 2009

The Guns of August, and Why the Republican Right Was So Adept at Using Them on
Health Care, by Robert Reich: What we learned in August is something we've
long known but keep forgetting: The most important difference between America's
Democratic left and Republican right is that the left has ideas and the right
has discipline. Obama and progressive supporters of health care were
outmaneuvered in August -- not because the right had any better idea for solving
the health care mess but because the rights' attack on the Democrats' idea was
far more disciplined than was the Democrats' ability to sell it.

I say the Democrats' "idea" but in fact there was no single idea. Obama never
sent any detailed plan to Congress. Meanwhile, congressional Dems were so
creative and undisciplined before the August recess they came up with a
kaleidoscope of health-care plans. The resulting incoherence served as an open
invitation to the Republican right to focus with great precision on convincing
the public of their own demonic version of what the Democrats were up to -- that
it would take away their Medicare, require "death panels," raise their taxes,
and lead to a government takeover of medicine, and so on. ...

This is just the latest chapter of a long saga. Over the last twenty years, as
progressives have gushed new ideas, the right has became ever more organized and
mobilized in resistance -- capable of executing increasingly consistent and
focused attacks, moving in ever more perfect lockstep, imposing an exact
discipline often extending even to the phrases and words used repeatedly by Hate
Radio, Fox News, and the oped pages of The Wall Street Journal ("death
tax," "weapons of mass destruction," "government takeover of health care.") I
saw it in 1993 and 1994 as the Clinton healthcare plan -- as creatively and
wildly convoluted as any policy proposal before or since -- was defeated both by
a Democratic majority in congress incapable of coming together around any single
bill and a Republican right dedicated to Clinton's destruction. ...

You want to know why the left has ideas and the right has discipline? Because
people who like ideas and dislike authority tend to identify with the Democratic
left, while people who feel threatened by new ideas and more comfortable in a
disciplined and ordered world tend to identify with the Republican right.
Democrats and progressives let a thousand flowers bloom. Republicans and the
right issue directives. This has been the yin and yang of American politics and
culture. But it means that the Democratic left's new ideas often fall victim to
its own notorious lack of organization and to the right's highly-organized fear
mongering. ...

August is coming to a close, and congressional recess is about over. History is
not destiny, and Democrats and progressives can yet enact meaningful health care
reform... But to do so, we'll need to be far more
disciplined about it. All of us, from Obama on down.

[On another issue - people "who like ideas and dislike authority" are the types who tend to end up in
universities, so this would also explain how self-selection could lead to a disproportionate number of Democrats in academia.]

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Update: Andrew Samwick says this all sounds familiar:

Robert Reich Is Having Deja Vu, Too, by Andrew Samwick: But he doesn't quite
realize it. In his latest
post..., he laments the way Democrat "ideas" couldn't persevere against the
onslaught of Republican "discipline." Change a few details, and he's
talking about failed Social Security reform in 2005:

I say the Democrats' "idea" but in fact there was
no single idea. Obama never sent any detailed plan to Congress. Meanwhile,
congressional Dems were so creative and undisciplined ...
they came up with a kaleidoscope of health-care plans. The resulting incoherence
served as an open invitation to the Republican right to focus with great
precision on convincing the public of their own demonic version of what the
Democrats were up to... The Obama White House -- a veritable idea factory brimming with ingenuity
-- thereafter proved unable to come up with a single, convincing narrative to
counteract this right-wing hokum. Whatever discipline Obama had mustered during
the campaign somehow disappeared.

Being "coherent" enough to overcome "hokum" ought to be the minimum standard
for legislation on this scale. Like it or not, if you want to use the
tools of a democratic government to reorganize markets for health care, you need
more than an idea factory and staged townhall meetings. You need some
discipline yourself. And we're not talking about Ironman triathlon level
discipline. We're only talking about government level discipline: white
papers, Congressional hearings, and, critically, a forum in which the ideas in
the bills that are moving through Congress are shown to be better ideas than the
alternatives. We haven't seen that at all. In particular, show me
why the bills moving through Congress, with all of their attendant costs, are
better than a simple reform consisting only of:

Community rating

Guaranteed issue

Ex post risk adjustment

An individual mandate, with Medicaid for a fee as the backup option

And spare me the whining about how the Republicans don't have a better plan.
They don't have the White House. They don't have the Senate. They
don't have the House. They don't have to have a better argument than the
claim that the Democrats' plan isn't better than the status quo. It's not
as if the Democrats shot down Social Security in 2005 and have now done
something better.

Comments

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Ideas versus Discipline

"This is just the latest chapter of a long saga":

The Guns of August, and Why the Republican Right Was So Adept at Using Them on
Health Care, by Robert Reich: What we learned in August is something we've
long known but keep forgetting: The most important difference between America's
Democratic left and Republican right is that the left has ideas and the right
has discipline. Obama and progressive supporters of health care were
outmaneuvered in August -- not because the right had any better idea for solving
the health care mess but because the rights' attack on the Democrats' idea was
far more disciplined than was the Democrats' ability to sell it.

I say the Democrats' "idea" but in fact there was no single idea. Obama never
sent any detailed plan to Congress. Meanwhile, congressional Dems were so
creative and undisciplined before the August recess they came up with a
kaleidoscope of health-care plans. The resulting incoherence served as an open
invitation to the Republican right to focus with great precision on convincing
the public of their own demonic version of what the Democrats were up to -- that
it would take away their Medicare, require "death panels," raise their taxes,
and lead to a government takeover of medicine, and so on. ...

This is just the latest chapter of a long saga. Over the last twenty years, as
progressives have gushed new ideas, the right has became ever more organized and
mobilized in resistance -- capable of executing increasingly consistent and
focused attacks, moving in ever more perfect lockstep, imposing an exact
discipline often extending even to the phrases and words used repeatedly by Hate
Radio, Fox News, and the oped pages of The Wall Street Journal ("death
tax," "weapons of mass destruction," "government takeover of health care.") I
saw it in 1993 and 1994 as the Clinton healthcare plan -- as creatively and
wildly convoluted as any policy proposal before or since -- was defeated both by
a Democratic majority in congress incapable of coming together around any single
bill and a Republican right dedicated to Clinton's destruction. ...

You want to know why the left has ideas and the right has discipline? Because
people who like ideas and dislike authority tend to identify with the Democratic
left, while people who feel threatened by new ideas and more comfortable in a
disciplined and ordered world tend to identify with the Republican right.
Democrats and progressives let a thousand flowers bloom. Republicans and the
right issue directives. This has been the yin and yang of American politics and
culture. But it means that the Democratic left's new ideas often fall victim to
its own notorious lack of organization and to the right's highly-organized fear
mongering. ...

August is coming to a close, and congressional recess is about over. History is
not destiny, and Democrats and progressives can yet enact meaningful health care
reform... But to do so, we'll need to be far more
disciplined about it. All of us, from Obama on down.

[On another issue - people "who like ideas and dislike authority" are the types who tend to end up in
universities, so this would also explain how self-selection could lead to a disproportionate number of Democrats in academia.]

HTML clipboard

Update: Andrew Samwick says this all sounds familiar:

Robert Reich Is Having Deja Vu, Too, by Andrew Samwick: But he doesn't quite
realize it. In his latest
post..., he laments the way Democrat "ideas" couldn't persevere against the
onslaught of Republican "discipline." Change a few details, and he's
talking about failed Social Security reform in 2005:

I say the Democrats' "idea" but in fact there was
no single idea. Obama never sent any detailed plan to Congress. Meanwhile,
congressional Dems were so creative and undisciplined ...
they came up with a kaleidoscope of health-care plans. The resulting incoherence
served as an open invitation to the Republican right to focus with great
precision on convincing the public of their own demonic version of what the
Democrats were up to... The Obama White House -- a veritable idea factory brimming with ingenuity
-- thereafter proved unable to come up with a single, convincing narrative to
counteract this right-wing hokum. Whatever discipline Obama had mustered during
the campaign somehow disappeared.

Being "coherent" enough to overcome "hokum" ought to be the minimum standard
for legislation on this scale. Like it or not, if you want to use the
tools of a democratic government to reorganize markets for health care, you need
more than an idea factory and staged townhall meetings. You need some
discipline yourself. And we're not talking about Ironman triathlon level
discipline. We're only talking about government level discipline: white
papers, Congressional hearings, and, critically, a forum in which the ideas in
the bills that are moving through Congress are shown to be better ideas than the
alternatives. We haven't seen that at all. In particular, show me
why the bills moving through Congress, with all of their attendant costs, are
better than a simple reform consisting only of:

Community rating

Guaranteed issue

Ex post risk adjustment

An individual mandate, with Medicaid for a fee as the backup option

And spare me the whining about how the Republicans don't have a better plan.
They don't have the White House. They don't have the Senate. They
don't have the House. They don't have to have a better argument than the
claim that the Democrats' plan isn't better than the status quo. It's not
as if the Democrats shot down Social Security in 2005 and have now done
something better.